Aftermath of Vex Virtual Competition

The Virtual Robotics competition has ended, and many pieces of information were given to the Vex Robotics community. A new game, new robotic parts, new code, new everything, as well as the world champion. Sadly, Westminster was eliminated in the very first round by chance but still had a very strong season.

A little bit of information for those who do not know anything about Vex Robotics. Vex is a robotics company that provides little robots and robotic parts for children to learn and get interested in robotics. They also provide kits for school and classes so that children can learn more through the curriculum. Vex also hosts competitions, from county tournaments all the way to the world competition. Every Robotics season, they announce a new game to be the one that will be used for competitions. The season that just ended had the game Tower Takeover, where you stack and place cubes in towers and goals.

The way the competition decided who won what matches was by total chance and points the team has gathered in previous competitions. Two numbers, which were your total amount of points that you gained in previous matches, would be randomly paired up and averaged. That was your score for the match. When a number is randomly picked, that number can no longer be picked again. Because of this random generation, any team could have won the world competition, and not by skill.

Vex also announced new parts that can be attached to the robot, the GPS. The GPS locates where you are in the field by x and y coordinates, and then tells certain parts of the code to run or not run. The CPUs (Central Processing Unit, or the brain of the robot) are also getting upgrades, where they now function faster and log the coordinates in them.

Along with all of this, Vex has introduced the new game, “Change Up”. The game is pretty simple\; put multiple balls that are on the field into towers that hold them. The entire game can be explained here. The new game looks a bit barren on the field, but I’m assuming that it will get pretty chaotic later in the game.

The season of robotics has ended, and the Westminster team has had a good run competing. Vex has announced robotics-related information, like new parts, a new game, and updates. The next season will be great, and Westminster is looking good in robotics. Hopefully, another robotics team from Westminster will go to Worlds again, and then will hopefully get into the top three.